Speeding up live cd boot through optimizing file layout

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 08:03:05AM +0200, Krzysztof Lichota wrote:
> Matt Zimmerman napisał(a):
> > How interesting.  Did you ensure that the list is up to date?  If it is, it
> > should be ordered according to the actual order in which files are read at
> > boot, so there should be no other I/O happening in parallel to cause
> > additional seeks.  Does the system have enough memory to cache all of the
> > files there?
> 
> The list was up to date, I have always used the same RC iso image.

Don't assume that it's perfect; hard disks are much more forgiving in this
respect than CDs.

> Maybe pinning readahead files in memory would help, but it is not that
> simple to do and it might be risky (use memory which is not needed thus
> making less memory available to apps).

I think block-level readahead might work better, since probably only a
relatively small portion of each file is accessed during startup.

-- 
 - mdz